6000 Man-Months went into Duke Nukem Forever

As the title would suggest, Duke Nukem Forever basically took forever to finish.

Duke Nukem Forever has been in development for a very long time, so nobody may ever know exactly how many hours were put into the game. Gearbox president Randy Pitchford, however, was able to take a guess on the PlayStation Blog.

“I have estimated that 3D Realms invested between 3500 and 4500 man-months of effort into the game, a lot of which has been lost to the ages,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, by the time Gearbox ships the game we’ll have put in another 2500 man-months of effort. I’ve never been involved with a project of this magnitude.”

All together, that’s a staggering 6000 man-months, which adds up to an even more astonishing one million total man-hours. To put that in perspective, Gearbox’s massive Borderlands only required between 3,500 and 4,000 total man-months worth of effort.

We’ll all be able to see if those hours were well spent when Duke Nukem Forever finally debuts on June 14 for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.